1. Field of the Invention
This invention has relation to the cleaning of contact lenses with a minimum of contact between the lenses and fingers, lens cases, and other possible contaminants.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Contact lens wearers customarily clean their lenses by procedures which bring their fingers in contact with the lenses. Wearers are urged by purveyors of contact lenses to use either heat or chemical disinfection. Chemical disinfection is recommended over heat by some medical doctors because of the negatives in the heat method: shorter lens life, opportunity to overheat or underheat and the need for a power source. On the other hand, chemical disinfection is effective in low concentration and for a wide variety of organisms. It also needs no power source. See Contact Lens Forum for January 1988, page 76. Liquid surfactant cleaners are recommended for daily use to remove common lens deposits, including bound protein. Ibid, Back Cover. Enzymatic cleaners are recommended for use with surfactant cleaners although surveys show that 35% of soft contact lens wearers never clean with enzymatic cleaners, only 20% clean once a week, and 35% once every two weeks. About 60% of RGP wearers never use enzymes, 5% once a week and 15% once every two weeks. Ibid, page 76.
It is known to place contact lens on scrubbing pads and then to use the index finger on the lens to move the lens around. Ibid, page 46.
Regardless of the currently recommended procedures for the cleaning and other processing of contact lenses, it is believed by the inventor and those in privity with her to be common knowledge that most contact lens users place the lens to be cleaned in the palm, add several drops of cleaning solution to the palm, and then use the forefinger of the other hand on the lens to rub it around in the palm. Cleaning is completed by inverting the lens and using the finger to rub it around in the palm again. It is recommended that the lens then be picked up on a dome-ended stick and put into an effervescent enzymatic cleaning solution before being reinserted in the eye. Because of the inconvenience of using this stick, this step is often skipped.
What was needed before the present invention was a way of cleaning and otherwise processing contact lenses which eliminated transfer of organisms and materials from the human hand and elsewhere to the lenses during the cleaning process. The inventor and those in privity with her are not aware of any prior art which anticipates this invention and the claims made herein.